Spring Cleaning Your Dirty Data

The thought of dirty data makes my skin crawl. It just sounds nasty.... even if you have no idea what it is. Maybe its the illicit-sounding alliteration, maybe its the realization that your online company information could actually be trash-talking your own business. Floating around the web unchecked, incorrect and misleading.... yeesh. Not good for you, not good for your lead generation.

Here's a scary statistic.. Estimates show dirty data is a big problem for the U.S. economy. How big? About twice the size of the national deficit. *

Here's an example: Someone looking for your service in your area.  They may or may not type in a

Local Search Marketing Made Easy.

Geo-modifier (the search engines know where we are, wherever, whenever, so its not a necessity anymore), your lead may or may not type in your business name or the industry/service/product (i.e. 'plumbing, wedding pictures, Your Hair Source').

Here's the problem: If you have six different versions of your digital data swamping up the results, search engines will dampen all of them. Those versions cancel each other out. There is no authority therefore no relevancy.  Even so much as an ampersand (instead of 'and) can be damaging.  Not to mention the incomplete or outdated addresses and phone numbers! How in the world do you expect someone to call you if you have the wrong phone number on your listings? Spelling mistakes or punctuation errors....

Even one listing with wrong information can spiral out of control. And in Local Search Marketing, that can mean a whole lot more than dirty data. Lost leads, lost customers, lost revenue.

So, what are you going to do about it? Are you going to do sit there, passive? Allow that dirty data to accumulate until there is a slim chance of finding the root of the problem and a slimmer chance of correcting the multitude of branch listings that sprung from that bad seed? Sure, you can do that. 

Or, you can fix it.

Here's the solution: Local Search Marketing is like a tree. The major data providers make up the roots of that tree, the foundation. The foundation should be like, well, all foundations. Strong, secure.  As your tree grows,  search engine listings are included and more citations are added (pretty leaves waving in the breeze) to strengthen that information. All this translates into your business information becoming more authoritative. Your business becomes more relevant to the search engines and more accessible to that potential customer typing away on their desktop, laptop or phone searching for what you provide right now.  So, what are you waiting for?  Contact Sundog Marketing now.

*$3 Trillion Problem: Three Best Practices for Today's Dirty Data Pandemic, Hollis Tibbets, the Global Director of Marketing at Dell